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Thursday, April 04, 2013

The "One Shade of Red" Launch Blog Tour

One Shade of Red

Guest post by Author Scott Bury

All good things must end
at some point. This is the last stop for the One Shade of Red launch
blog tour.

The tour began a week
before the book’s official launch on April 2, and ends today. By now, I think
most readers know that One Shade of Red is a gentle parody of the bewildering
bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey.

I turned the concept of
EL James magnum opus completely upside down. One Shade is narrated by a
20-year-old man who encounters a somewhat older (but still young), brilliant,
energetic and seriously hot Alexis Rosse. She teaches him about business,
relationships and that special something that no men or women can resist: each
other.

This excerpt comes from
Chapter 15, “Mom’s Advice,” where Damian asks for his mother’s advice in
dealing with the women in his life.

Book Excerpt:

One Shade of Red

Women
want the perfect man, so they can change him. But when university student
Damian Serr discovers a rich, beautiful woman who’s voracious about sex, he
doesn’t try to improve on perfection. It’s all that he can do to hold on for
the ride.

Damian has always followed the rules,
always tried to please others. At 20, he still dates the girl next door because
his parents like her parents. When Nick, his university roommate, asks Damian
to take over his pool-cleaning business so he can take an internship in London,
Damian can’t say no — especially to Nick’s first and only client, a rich widow.

But widow Alexis Rosse is far from helpless
or lonely. This beautiful financial genius is busy turning the markets
upside-down, and she revels in sex wherever, whenever and with whomever she
wants.

Over the summer, Alexis gives Damian an
intense education. Day after day, she pushes him to his sexual limits. The only
question he has is: will she break them?

“So well-written that it flows easily, hooking
the reader right from the beginning. I had real problems to stop reading it.” —
Cinta Garcia de la Rosa, author of A Foreigner in London and reviewer of
Indie Authors You Want to Read.

“How niceit is to see a dude lit-style
book! And well-written at that!” Lisa Jey Davis, “Ms. Cheevious”

One Shade of Red is now
available on Amazon, Smashwords and other fine e-tailers. For links, visit
Scottswrittenwords.blogspot.com.

The
previous stop on the tour was April 5, Frederick Lee Brooke’s blog, Author Unplugged.

Chapter 15: Mom’s Advice

My mother finally voiced the words I had
been dreading for over a week.

“Why haven’t you
brought Kristen over in such a long time?” She still rolled the r slightly, even after all these years
in Canada.

I took a deep
breath and looked at the tree Mom sat beneath. Another hot, dry summer day in
Toronto. I sat down on the patio chair and poured myself a glass of iced tea
from the pitcher. It was my Mom’s special Sunday afternoon iced tea recipe: I
didn’t know the exact proportions, but it involved a generous dollop of tea and
lemon with the vodka.

She lay on the
hammock, reading a book. She looked like what I thought of as a typical
European intellectual: small, thin with lots of thick black hair. She had wide
but thin lips and a long, straight nose that I had inherited.

I realized that
my entire concept of intellectual European women was based on my own mother.

A little aluminum
table at her elbow bore a tall glass. “Watcha readin?” I asked to change the
subject.

She showed me the
cover: Fifty Shades of Grey.

“Oh, no, not you
too, Mom!”

“Everyone is
reading it, so I thought I’d see what the fuss is about.”

“I heard it was
all about bondage and kinky sex.”

“Hmp. Not so
much. There is some sex, yes, but not a lot of bondage. Mostly, it’s
contractual language and copies of emails.”

“Broke up? With
Kristen?” my mother echoed. “Oh, shweetie, what happen?” Her accent always
became more pronounced when she felt stressed.

What had
happened? “I just think ... well, we both realized that we had some ...
fundamental differences of opinion on some important matters.”

“What are you
talking about? You had a fight, I understand that. What about? Usually, these
things seem silly after a while, when you both calm down and can look at it
rationally.”

“I don’t think
so. Kristen’s mind is made up and she is not willing to budge her opinion an
inch.”

“Did you try
talking about it?”

I thought about
Kristen and me, “talking” about sex. Or the lack of it.

Mom refilled both
our iced teas and sat at the patio table. Our knees nearly touched. “This seems
like an issue that’s been building for a long time. It requires a serious
talk.” She pushed a glass to me and took a gulp from hers.

“Yah. It’s been
between us for a couple of years, I guess.”

“You’ve spoken
about it more than once, I hope?”

“Oh, yah. Well,
tried. It doesn’t go very far.”

“What’s the
argument about?”

What could I say?
I figured that Mom being a woman would take Kristen’s side. I drank half the
iced tea. It was strong. “Sex.”

My mother’s face
showed shock. “Sex? What are you trying to do to the poor girl?”

This was going
even worse than I had feared. “Nothing! That’s it! That’s the disagreement!”

My mother then
did the worst thing possible: she laughed. Loud and long. “What! I don’t
believe it!”

“What do you
mean?”

“Damian, you’re
both twenty years old, and you’ve been dating since you were fourteen! I just
assumed that at some point, the two of you had sex!” She gulped more iced tea.
“But I see the problem. What’s with that girl?”

“Oh, sure, all
the unmarried girls here are virgins.” I loved it when my mother was sarcastic.
“Well, I can tell you, Kristen doesn’t get these ideas from her mother.”

I had to agree:
Mrs. Petri was the “hot mom” of the neighbourhood. Tyler and Patrick used to
make jokes about how lucky I was to go to Kristen’s house when I was 13 and 14.
She didn’t dress like her daughter: she was attractive, even beautiful, and she
knew it. She always had her fair hair done fashionably. She liked to wear tight
blouses and tight pants, high heels and jewelry.

“I’ve seen your
father looking at Mrs. Petri, you know,” my mother said. She refilled our
glasses again, emptying the pitcher. “Have you tried being romantic?”

Was it strange to
talk to your mother for seduction tips? “Sure,” I answered.

I told her about
last Valentine’s Day. I had gone all-out: reservations at an expensive
restaurant, a dozen red roses, a box of chocolates. Kristen enjoyed all of it,
and we went back to my apartment. I had contrived to make sure that Nick was
gone. We settled in to watch what I had heard was a sexy, romantic movie: I am Love.

Kristen put a
hand flat against my chest. “This has been such a nice Valentine’s Day. Don’t
ruin it.”

“Don’t put pressure
on Kristen to have sex. It won’t work,” my mother said. “You have to give her
time to come around on her own. You see, Kristen is afraid of sex.” She was
really rolling her rs now.

“Do
you know what your father did to get me into bed the first time?” she asked,
and my heart stopped.

Actually
stopped.

“Mom!”

“He bit my
bottom lip, not hard, of course, more like he sucked it into his mouth while he
was kissing me, and he stroked the back of my neck — ”

“You can stop
now, Mom,” I said, but her eyes were closed. One hand moved in the air, showing
me how my Dad had stroked her neck.

Scott Bury is a
journalist, editor and novelist based in Ottawa, Canada. His articles have
appeared in magazines in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia, including
Macworld, the Financial Post, Applied Arts, the Globe and Mail and Graphic Arts
Monthly.

One Shade of Red is his second novel to be published.

His first published
novel is The Bones of the Earth, a fantasy set in the real time and place of
eastern Europe of the sixth century. He has also published a short story, Sam, the Strawb Part (proceeds of which are donated to an autism charity),
and a paranormal story, Dark Clouds. His work in progress is tentatively titled Walking
from the Soviet Union, and tells the true story of a Canadian drafted into
the Red Army during the Second World War, his escape from a German POW camp and
his journey home.

Scott Bury lives in Ottawa
with his lovely, supportive and long-suffering wife, two mighty sons and the
orangest cat in history.